Electronic control devices are nowadays being increasingly used in the automotive environment, for instance as engine control devices in anti-lock braking systems and in airbags. For electrically driven vehicles, it is necessary to develop battery systems with an associated battery management system, that is to say a control device having software for monitoring battery functionalities. Depending on customer requirements or the available installation space, the batteries are designed differently in terms of the number of battery components. As is known, the software in the control devices of these battery management systems must master a multiplicity of possible combinations of the battery components.
Typical battery management systems ensure the safe and reliable operation of the battery cells or batteries. They monitor and control currents, voltages, temperatures, insulation resistance and other variables for individual battery cells and for the entire battery. It is known practice to use these variables to implement battery management functions which increase the service life, the reliability and the safety of the battery system, as described, for instance, in DE 10 2011 082 937 which was filed before the present document and published thereafter.
Battery management systems consist of a multiplicity of control devices on which individual software functionalities run. On account of the different design of different batteries, there is a large amount of configuration effort for the software for operating the battery management systems. The testing of the different battery management systems is also complicated as a result.